So I have an astigmatism and nearsightedness, meaning I have to wear prescription glasses. I've found that when I'm wearing my glasses, vibrant red colors on my retina iPad and iPhone look closer than everything else, and vibrant blue colors look farther away. I figure that has something to do with the distortion from my glasses, and the fineness of the iPad's pixels. Does anybody else see this effect? It's actually pretty cool when choosing colors for things. I get a little Z-axis action for extra customization options.

Yes I have this effect. I am on my iPhone so I can't provide a link. However when I went to my optometrist he said it had to do with myopia. It is an effect that can be corrected with a new prescription. Also he mentioned that not many people witness this phenomenon. If it really bothers you I would suggest going to your optometrist and getting a new prescription.

I don't have a retina iPad, but I see this all the time whenever there are saturated reds and blues near each other. It's basically a prism effect from the lenses of your glasses, which is especially noticeable (more so the farther away from the center of your lenses you look) if you have a strong prescription and use high-refractive-index polycarbonate lenses instead of the cheap ones.

It's annoying sometimes but seems to be a totally normal consequence of needing strong glasses... personally I hardly notice it any more, since I've been using high-index lenses for about 20 years now.

I'm at 2.25 and see it if I look at red/blue lights at an angle. It'll happen with any lens, it's a prism effect from differing refractive indices of different materials (glass/plastic and air, in this case).

I have similar vision problems but do not see the effect of which you speak on the iPad 3 or iPhone 5. Perhaps you can link to some pronounced examples? Do you have problems with the color blindness tests, as I always pass those fine.

I see color just fine. It's a somewhat subtle effect, and it's possible to miss it. Someone said above it's basically a prism effect, and I've actually noticed the effect in other places too. If I look out of the corner of my eyes, sometimes certain shades of blue fabric look greenish and sometimes lights have red and blue outlines.

That may be what's happening to you then. It's a difficult subject to find material on and if you go to LensCrafters they may not know or care to help with it. Here is one article on it that might give you some leads.

You can also read what people with similar issues are saying on forums dedicated to finding the best lenses/glasses. Thought I don't have this problem myself, from what I have seen... thicker plastic lenses do better than thinner polycarbonate and glass lenses.

EDIT:

More info on Wikipedia linked below with picture examples, you want a higher ABBÉ number to get less distortion, higher refraction index lenses tend to fare worse in this category (High index lenses are what LensCrafters etc pushes these days as they are thinner and lighter).

I have contact lenses and I notice this effect when I'm out somewhere at night and someone has deep blue LEDs on something at a distance. They look like they're farther away, almost like past infinity. For instance at a concert, and there are amps on stage with these lights.

The proble I used to have with glasses and a highres display is that straight ahead, everything is fine, but at the corners, white splits off into red/blue.

this is the famous chromatic aberration and has to do with the inability of all lenses to make all color frequencies focus at the same point. This is why expensive cameras have a lot of lenses to correct the focus for several wave lengths making all focus at the same point. see here

I don't see that but your glasses probably are causing loss of sync in time between the color frequencies. Probably they are introducing a small delay on some color frequencies making they arrive nanoseconds later than others, making your brain think objects are slightly far away.

The delay between frequencies would be so brief as to be near-immeasurable, let alone detectable by the brain. Plus we're talking about looking at objects on the screen. After they're visible, the delay is irrelevant since you're perceiving the colors continuously.

The depth perception is more likely caused by one eye's lens shifting colors differently (think about how a prism separates colors this way). The brain will perceive the relative positions of different colored objects in both eyes as depth. E.g., if a red object is shifted 1mm more to the right than a blue object in the right lens, it will appear closer in depth than the blue object.

I thought this was universal. I remember seeing the effect on my old CRT monitor while browsing poorly designed geocities pages. There would be blue text near red text on a black background; the red would appear to float while the blue sank back

Maybe this is related, but whenever I play a video game, watch a movie or even look at a still image, if I close one eye I get a rather profound 3d effect. I even made a makeshift eyepatch to play games in "3D," but it gave me a headache :P

This number represents an optical material's ability to refract light and how much this refraction reads the light into a spectrum. Higher abbé numbers spread the light less than lower abbé numbers. The lens in a human eye has an abbé number of approximately 42 to 50. Nearly all plastic lens materials have lower abbé numbers. The lens material in my current glasses has an abbé number of 32. This color spreading effect is more noticeable with stronger lens prescriptions.

This effect shows up in my vision with any strongly saturated colors next to each other. As I move my head/vision from side to side the various colored shapes "move" at different rates.

This effect is stronger with high index lenses as these generally have lower abbé numbers. The effect is also stronger near the edges of my vision vs the center of my lenses.